Trillium
by LindsayQ
Summary: Tumblr Prompt: Headcanon time: Napoleon somehow always finds the time to visit his dead wife's grave on her birthday. But one year he just has too much work to do and, very embarrassed, asks Illya to bring by some flowers. Illya in turn admits, also embarrassed, that he planned to visit and lay down some flowers anyway, knowing how important she was, and still is, for his partner.


**Disclaimer:** MAN From U.N.C.L.E. and all ideas associated with it aren't mine. Shirley is.

 **Warning:** Unedited because I wrote it instead of sleep and don't trust my skills yet. I'll edit later.

 **A/N:** For expresstoneverland on Tumblr

* * *

Napoleon was halfway over the Atlantic, watching the clouds below start to slowly shift from the usual immaculate white gentle wisps of day to the seemingly more solid purplish gray spread of night - the only signal he needed to know that his mid-afternoon flight from Paris en-route to JFK Airport was slowly moving into the last bit of the journey, when he readjusted his arm on the arm rest and turned away from the window finally.

Rather soon after turning away from the window something shiny hit his eye and reflected at just the right angle it forced him to squint against its potency for a split second before he shifted his wrist again and looked down. He felt the corner of his mouth twitch ever so slightly when his exhaustion rattled mind realised it was his watch.

He ran a calloused thumb over top the scuffed watch face almost lovingly and then dropped his hand away from his wrist completely and shook his head. He knew if he took it off to read the back he'd most likely not be able to read what it'd once said now due to age and circumstances. However, he also knew he didn't need to. The words had long since been interred in a special place in both his heart and mind – a fail-safe in case one ever failed him.

"I do love nothing in the world," he mouthed, his thumb finding the watch face again as his eyes worked over every nick and smudge of the once pristine glass, "so well as you."

It'd been his one and only wedding gift from Shirley, given to him the day before the married. Ok, that was a lie, he'd also gotten a rather nice red and black plaid flannel jacket – an inside joke that pertained to her being Canadian. The watch, a Bulova American Eagle (also an inside joke that pertained to *his* nationality), was in the pocket.

Napoleon could still see the uneasy look in her dark blue eyes as he worked the box from the pocket of the jacket without taking his eyes off her. Once the box was out of his pocket and completely in his hand he'd looked down. Only to look back up in a flash with blown wide eyes as soon as he noticed the words BULOVA printed in big, proud, gold letters on the rectangular brown leather box.

Shirley had been working herself through Secretarial college at the time. There was no way she could have afforded such a watch. She shouldn't have anyway – it wasn't fair. And he'd meant to tell her that. But the words seem to stick in his throat as soon as he pulled the lid open and set eyes on the gold watch that lay inside, nestled on black velvet.

She had taken his much larger hands in hers then, as soon as he'd lifted the watch from the box, and carefully turned them so he seen the back. The same thumb had run gently over the, then, newly etched words ("Shakespeare," she'd whispered, "Benedick, remember?"), with quite the same smile for the very first time and then dropped it away just long enough for him to throw his arm around her, watch grasped protectively in his fist as he did so, and kiss her with every bit of emotion he dared not show in any other way.

Two years later, almost to the day, Napoleon had stomped on the seemingly unbreakable watch face as hard as he'd possibly could a minute and a half after the doctor, with specks of Shirley's blood still bright red on his gown, told him that, though her will to live had obviously been quite strong, the internal bleeding caused by the force and angle at which the delivery truck had hit her Corvair was just too severe.

It had only taken him that long because he'd had trouble thinking over the fury in his mind and burning in his veins and seeing through the hot tears blurring his vision.

The only thing he remembered saying while simultaneously suffering both the hottest flashes and coldest chills of his life was, "she'll want to go home. She'll want to go home…" He'd repeated it quietly as he bent quickly and put his chest to his knees in an effort to finally inhale a full breath, but failed and shot back up into a fully upright position. His hands fisted the hair on either side of his head then and yanked hard enough for white to start flashing behind his closed eyelids. He'd known, even back then he couldn't do that. He couldn't allow her… form to leave the country. She had no one back home, she'd be all alo-

All blood seemed to drain from Napoleon's body as reality seemingly smacked him in the face. His eyes rolled swiftly back to the watch. It was 6:37 now, he was probably stuck on the plane for at least another 3 or 4 more hours, which would mean he wouldn't get back till 10 or 11 and then there was still that 40-minute drive from JFK to Manhattan and then it was another 45 to Kensico in Valhalla. But maybe he could cut time and just go straight—

A hand immediately went to his forehead in hopes of massaging away the sudden headache that'd appeared as his throat started trying to rid itself of the growing lump in it, and Napoleon worked to not to let the incredibly irritating burning sensation behind his newly shut eyes win, lest he embarrass himself further.

He wasn't going to make it.

Five years to the day she died and he'd been so busy - too busy, to notice, and now he wasn't going to make it!

His right hand came around his left wrist, the wrist with the watch on it, and squeezed as tightly as he could. His ears just faintly picking up the sound of the battered watch face creaking under the strain of his middle finger pressing down on it. He'd wanted to voice an apology, but didn't trust his voice. So, he just held it tightly, pulled close against his chest, and let the nausea, brought on by an unfamiliar and unwelcome shock of absolute self-loathing, wash over him.

He let her down.

Again.

Napoleon's eyes were still burning when they set almost immediately upon his partner standing below the clock on the wall about fifty feet from where he stood just beyond the gate. He swallowed a few times to keep the bile rising in his throat, down, and tried to smile at his partner.

If Illya noticed his queasy smile he didn't say a word about it. Or his excessively disheveled look. Instead, the blond nodded at him curtly, and took both his suitcase and overnight bag from him and gestured with his head toward the hallway that led to the nearest exit. "I'm double parked," was the only thing said, but with a smirk, as he moved a step ahead and quickly away from him. The only sound Napoleon found himself aware of in the muted din of midnight at the airport right then was the echoed click of the heels of Illya's shoes as he walked.

Napoleon slipped easily into the passenger side of the Polara as Illya put his things in the trunk and barely had enough energy left to close the door again before one eye seem to fall closed almost on its own accord as the pull of exhaustion became too much even for him. With a sudden burst of energy, he managed to peel the eye open again, and then settled deeper into the seat and threw his arms across his chest. Or, he would have. If his hand hadn't brushed against something cold and damp on the way up from the seat to his chest.

His stomach seemed to flip flop and then drop completely when he lifted the white trillium from the space between them. His fingers clenched the stem of the singular flower in a flash as his too wide eyes tried to take in every last, minute detail of the flower in front of him. How did—

"Ah," he heard Illya say. Napoleon turned toward him then and blinked. The Russian's cheeks held a bit more colour than they had in the airport…or maybe his tired eyes were just seeing things? "you found it I see."

Napoleon nodded quickly and then swallowed a few times in quick succession before he spoke, "it's a trillium."

Illya's blue eyes shone in the dim light of the parking garage, both of his hands going to the steering wheel, "such a charming talent for stating the obvious, my friend. Yes, it is."

Napoleon blinked again and swallowed. Again. "Shirley's flower."

The Russian's eyes fluttered at the statement but kept locked on him as he nodded again. "It is."

This time it was Napoleon's turn to nod as he looked quickly back to the flower. It took him a few good hard tries after that to finally swallow again, but when he did he quickly pushed on, "why is it here?"

In his peripheral vision Napoleon seen Illya's head swiveled to face the dashboard, instead of him finally.

Silence fell in the car for a good minute or two before his partner spoke up again. This time far quieter.

"A slight oversight on the florist's part." The palm of his left hand ran half way around the circumference of the steering wheel and then quickly returned to its former position again and stayed there. "Lovely woman, but her age may be getting the best of her." Silence again, but only long enough for Illya to blink before he continued, "she gave me a bouquet with a Baker's Dozen, and knowing you believe in, as well as practice superstitions, I pulled that one out before I put the lot on the headstone."

The dark-haired man's body drained of colour again as his sluggish mind tried to understand just what his friend had just said.

He kept his rapidly blurring eyes firmly on the flower, his free hand fisted in his lap, as he spoke. Napoleon was no longer capable of anything above a whisper, but in the cramped confines of the quickly cooling car, his words had no problem carrying across to Illya.

"Thank you."

A sharp squeeze of his knee was the only thing that told him that he'd been heard.

When he finally made it to bed that night he dreamed of Shirley. Something he had done every October for the past four years. This dream was no different from most others, really. Aside from one thing. In her hand, as she grinned at him from her seat on a bench under a tree not dissimilar to the one he'd first kissed her under, was a singular trillium.

The cool, calming sensation he felt when she kissed his cheek made his heart flutter just as it had the day he'd asked her to marry him. He squeezed her hand gently after that and then felt himself smiled when she squeezed back.

"Tell Illya I said thank you," her grin fell only slightly and her hand moved out from under his hand to cradle his jaw. As Napoleon relaxed, letting her touch seep into, and calm, his weathered body, Shirley's bright blue eyes seemed to take on a wholly new and contented glow as they took in every new nuance on his face. She continued finally with, "for everything."

End

*The white trillium flower is the provincial flower of Ontario, where Shirley is from.


End file.
